MODERN WARFARE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20031, 1 September 1939, Page 7

MODERN WARFARE

NEED FOR TRAINING STRIKING ILLUSTRATION Illustrating the paramount importance- of training for troops both from the point of view of efficiency and persppar'safety ’is the following incident,‘drawn from the wartime experience qf a former member of the New Zealand "Rifle Brigade,’ Mr. T. E. McNiiiian" „ “In a dawn advance in the Solesmes region, thp objective being a sunken, railway, our troop was strung out. 9yer a. ; wid,e.,front with a good between each man,”, he writes. “I was ordered to act 'as section leader in an. emergency and when some of the dense morning fog had "cleared a\yay I noticed one of the section” streaking away in front ot all” the rest, “I shputed to the man to fall back and get out of the line of our creeping. barrage. The man looked sideways and’ went on. Within a minute he was down with a shrapnel splinter in the stomach. It took three of us to carry him back to where the stretcher-bearers could take him over. ' ,

“It SO happened that the enemy hacf'retired J Horn the railway during the night, and 'that'man was our only‘casualty. He was a new man out from England, with far too little training, either for military efficiency or proper discipline. All the labour and cost of getting that man to where he was wanted was wasted, and goodness knows how much more it' cost to have him restored to fitness.” The writer goes on to state that under-training was the cause of thousands of lives being lost in the war. It was in the interest of every man to undergo intensive compulsory training.